A Love So Deadly (2 page)

Danny mumbles something I can’t understand, but I’m assuming is more profanity.

“Please, Danny,” I beg, fist tightening around the wheel as I make a sharp left turn onto county road 50, following the sedan as he takes the back roads out of town. “I’m worried about her. I’ll drop a hundred dollar bill in the mailbox for you tomorrow, if you’ll just let me know she’s upstairs sleeping.”

“Keep your money,” he snaps.

There’s a sharp clacking sound, loud enough to make me wince, but the line doesn’t go dead. I strain to hear what’s going on and imagine I can make out Danny’s footsteps thudding up the stairs. A minute passes—a minute that I know is a minute, not an eternity, because I can see the clock on my console holding steady at 12:21—and then I definitely hear footsteps on the stairs.

The steps are faster, louder, giving me a clue that Caitlin isn’t safe in her bed, even before a breathless Danny picks up the phone.

“She’s not there,” he pants, not sounding so tough anymore. He sounds as scared as I feel, and so young I feel like shit for not being able to protect him from whatever has happened. “She’s not in bed and the lamp near the window is knocked over. The bulb is shattered all over the floor.”

I curse, fingers tightening on the wheel, barely resisting the urge to slam the gas pedal closer to the floor and shorten the distance between me and the sedan. But if this guy has Caitlin, he’s going to be on the lookout for someone following him. I don’t want to get into a high speed chase with the girl I love knocking around in the trunk. She could already be hurt. I need to keep my thoughts clear, and my head on straight, and do whatever it takes to make sure I get her back in one piece.

And make sure I have the chance to tear the man who took her into strips of bleeding, aching, dying flesh for daring to touch her. I’ll kill him if he’s hurt her.

I may kill him anyway.

“I’m going to call 911,” Danny says, pulling my thoughts back to the boy on the other end of the line.

“No, wait,” I say, though a part of me insists it’s a good idea.

But I don’t know who has Caitlin, or what he might know about our extracurricular activities. There’s a chance that her kidnapping is unrelated to the things we’ve been doing, but I can’t know that for sure, and until I do, I can’t put her future at risk. I don’t want the cops called in until I’m sure I can’t handle this myself.

“Wait until I get a better idea of where this guy is going,” I say. “I’m following the man who took her.”

“What?” Danny says. “How?”

“I pulled up outside your house as the man was pulling away. I saw part of Caitlin’s pink tee shirt sticking out of the trunk.”

Danny curses. “What are you going to do? You have to get her back, Gabe.”

“I’m going to get her back,” I promise. “Hang tight by the phone. If I need you to call the police, I’ll call. If you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, get one of the cell phones from Caitlin’s bedside table. Call 911 from the cell, and leave an anonymous tip that you saw a blue sedan headed east on route 50. Tell them you heard a girl screaming inside the trunk. Don’t tell them who you are.”

“Can you hear her screaming?” Danny asks, his voice shaking.

“No, I can’t,” I say softly. “I’m going to drive now, Danny. Hang in there, don’t tell any of the other kids, and don’t give your name to the police. I’m going to bring Caitlin home, or die trying.”

“Okay,” Danny says. A moment later the line goes dead, seconds before the sedan takes a sharp turn to the left, headed down a gravel road.

I fight the urge to brake, keeping the Beamer headed straight on 50 even though my heart surges up into my throat as I watch the car with Caitlin in it rush away to the north. That last turn was too sudden, even for a crap driver like this guy. He must suspect I’m following him. I have to keep going until the next bend, then turn around and retrace my route with the headlights off and put him off his guard. I should be able to figure out where he went. It hasn’t rained in weeks. The gravel is dry and will hang in the air after being disturbed. All I’ll have to do is hang back and follow the trail.

Around the next turn, I veer onto the shoulder and spin in a tight circle, flipping my lights off as I start back the way I came. It’s dark as the bottom level of hell out here in the country, away from the lights of town and the streetlights of the suburbs. But there’s a half moon in the sky, giving off enough light that I’m able to keep the car on the right side of the road. I spot the turn onto the gravel road—Ellery Avenue—and turn right.

My heart is still beating so fast and hard it feels like someone is punching me in the throat with every throb of my pulse, but the knowledge that I’m back on the fucker’s trail is comforting. So is the haze of dust hanging in the air above the road. I’m starting to think this is going to work, and I’ll be able to tail the guy to wherever he’s taking Caitlin without being observed, when a lightning bolt of pain zigzags through my skull.

It starts in my neck and rips through the center of my head to explode behind my right eye. I see dying stars—flashes of orange and deep red that morph into patches of blinding white light—and the world does a three sixty.

I cry out and slam on the brakes.

Or, I think I do. I tell my foot to push down, but I’m not sure if it obeys. I’m not sure where I am, who I am. All I know is that I’m blind and the world is spinning. Up is down, right is left, I can’t see and I can’t nail down my position in space. And then, like a light switched off, everything goes black, and I am alone with the pain that roars inside me like a monster hungry for blood.

CHAPTER TWO
Caitlin

It is not a secret if it is known by three people.
–Irish proverb

Dust. Old Clothes. Mold.

Something bitter and metallic, with an overtone of rot.

The smells are the first thing I’m aware of. They are awful smells, smells that remind me of somewhere I’ve been before. I can’t remember the place, but I know it’s nowhere I want to be again. I
know
, even before my eyes creak open to see the dusty floor of Pitt’s attic forming my horizon line, and a single, bare, orange bulb dangling from the ceiling like a sickly little sun.

I blink, my lashes catching on the mattress beneath my cheek.

The mattress
. I’m lying on the mattress Pitt’s mother slept on, wept on,
died
on.

My entire body convulses. I roll onto the floor with a spasm of arms and legs and a frantic clutching of my stomach. I roll and keep rolling until something catches hard around my ankle, bruising the bone, and I can’t roll any further. I sit up, sobs catching in my throat as I reach for my leg. The world blurs as I move and a dull, throbbing pain starts at my left temple, near the place where Pitt must have hit me to knock me out.

Knocked me out and brought me back to his attic, where God only knows what he plans to do to me. And there will be no one to stop him, no one riding to the rescue. No one will
ever
think to look for me here except Gabe, and Gabe is gone.

I have to get out; I have to fucking get out.

I find the source of the pain around my ankle. A handcuff circles my leg just above my anklebone. The other half of the cuff is attached to a length of heavy chain tied around one of the support beams not far from the mattress. I pick up the chain and track my way down it with trembling fingers, but every link is strong and there’s no way I’m going to be able to knock over the thick, wooden support beam without a sledgehammer.

I’m caught. Trapped. There’s no way out.

The truth is still settling in—hands wrapping around my throat, promising to choke the life out of me—when the trap door on the far right of the attic opens and the collapsible stairs descend. A shaft of brighter light pierces the orange gloom, casting a jagged, sharp-edged square of white on the wall.

I back away, arms trembling at my sides, getting as close to the window as I can. But I’m still two feet from the sill, far enough that no one looking in would see me, and I know this house is so deep in the middle of nowhere there will be no one to hear me scream.

Still, I have to grip my throat with one hand to hold back a panicked whimper as Pitt appears at the top of the stairs and steps into the attic. He’s wearing all black—black jeans, black tee shirt, and a black sock cap that covers his thinning blond hair—and I’m possessed by the nasty feeling that the tables have been turned, and I don’t like it.

Not one little bit.

“You’re awake,” he says, his tiny, pink-rimmed blue eyes looking even smaller with the bulb overhead casting dark shadows above his cheekbones. “I was worried. You barely moved the entire time I was carrying you.”

I don’t say a word. I watch him, fighting to keep the fear and panic from my face, resisting the urge to pull my pink sleep shirt lower around my thighs. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified I am. Terrified—for myself, and for the kids, who are going to wake up tomorrow morning and be scared out of their minds when they realize I’m gone.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Pitt says, in that same smug, condescending voice he used when he talked about Danny’s behavior problems and lack of potential at all those stupid conferences.

I can’t believe I sat across from him and talked about my brother like I was talking to a halfway reasonable person. I always knew Pitt was a jerk and a bully and probably had a penis the size of a shriveled gherkin—no man with even an average-sized dick would be so petty—but I’d never dreamt he was capable of breaking into someone’s house and kidnapping them. Even when I learned what he’d done to his mom, I hadn’t imagined he’d do the same thing to anyone else. I had assumed it was a twisted, mother-son thing that had played out its sad, miserable course, and been put to rest.

Obviously, I was wrong, and I’m not near as smart as I think I am. If I were, Pitt would never have traced that blackmail note back to me.

That has to be it. That has to be why I’m here. Somehow, he must have figured out that I wrote the note, no matter how careful I was to type the entire thing and print it out at the copy shop in town instead of using the printer at home.

But how? How the hell did he—

“Did you hear me?” Pitt breaks into my thoughts, making me flinch as he takes a sudden step closer.

I try to take a mirror step back, forgetting I’m tethered, and nearly fall.

“Careful.” Pitt chuckles. “You’re all arms and legs aren’t you? Like a little filly.”

“You have to let me go,” I say, liking the affectionate note in his voice even less than the smug one. If Pitt thinks I’m going to play house with him, or touch him, or do anything else with him, he’s very fucking mistaken.

I’ll chew my own leg off first.

Pitt shakes his head, pulling his cap from his head as he turns to pace across the attic, closer to where I found the DVDs. The area that was once filled with boxes is now barren, proving Pitt has learned not to keep his goodies where someone sneaking in the window can find them.

Not that he has any goodies left anymore.

“No, Caitlin. I can’t let you go.” His voice is muffled now that his back is turned, but I can still hear him loud and clear. “You took something that belongs to me, and now you’re going to help get it back.”

“How did you find out?” There’s no point in pretending I wasn’t the one who stole from him. He obviously knows. Now I want to know how. I want to know how Gabe and I screwed up, so we don’t do it again.

Gabe is done with you, and you’re never leaving this room. Your days of breaking and entering and living to plan the next job are over.

I clench my jaw, refusing to listen to the ominous voice in my head.

“The dust.” Pitt points to the floorboards. “I was able to get two clear footprints, but they were so small…”

He laughs as he turns back to me. “I thought it was a kid, one of my students. I was looking for your brother tonight, but then I saw those little black combat boots in your closet and the tread matched up just right…” He shakes his head. “I was surprised, Caitlin. I really was. You do such a good job of hiding what you are, coming off so sweet and honest and concerned about your brother.” He tips his chin down, casting his eyes in deeper shadow before he adds in an uglier voice, “but you’re just lying, thieving trash. Like the rest of your family.”

“At least I’m not a murderer,” I say, voice shaking.

Pitt smiles, a horrible smile that makes my belly churn as a tornado of acid sweeps across my stomach lining. “I spent over a month breaking in to little boys’ rooms because of you, Caitlin, and that really isn’t my thing. But I couldn’t let it go. You had to have known I would never let it go, not until I had them back with me. Where they belong.”

“You’re not getting the DVDs back,” I say. “Not from me. I don’t know where they are. My partner hid them.”

“A partner?” Pitt cocks his head, but I can’t tell if he’s really surprised.

“Yeah, my partner,” I say. “He handles that kind of thing, and he’s going to be very fucking upset when he finds out I’m missing. It won’t take him long to figure out where I am. You should let me go.”

“No,” Pitt says, but I hear a hint of doubt in his voice.